So this is what I've been up to....

Every once in a while I get on an organizing kick.  I learned long ago that containment is the secret to organization, but then I somehow don't always apply it.  My pantry needed a redo.  We always have a lot of food in the house, and it's stacked in the pantry, and half of it you don't see because it's hidden in the back, and when you try to get items from the back, everything falls over or falls off the shelf.

So, I decided that it would be great if everything was in baskets, the way they do it in the Williams-Sonoma or Pottery Barn  catalogs.  Beautiful, brown baskets, all stacked in rows with all my staples in them.  But there are two problems with that, first of all, it could be really spendy.  Baskets aren't cheap, they would easily cost me $20-35 dollars each and that would be a major expense.  And second, they wouldn't be at all transparent, it would be hard to see inside them.

So Sunday I was on a mission, I went to Wally World, checked out their storage section, and found these plastic baskets.  The small ones cost me $1.50, the large size was $2.50, and I bought one jumbo one for $3.50.  And as a result, I bought a total of fourteen baskets, and reorganized my entire pantry for $30, yes, all of it for $30!  What a deal!!! The big basket on the bottom of the pantry I've had for several years, and you can't see the top shelf in the picture, but it's all organized, too, and I think it looks great!!! So here are the pictures, before and after, and yes, that's Hamburger Helper you see in there.  *blush*  Well, after all, it does make a great meal!!! And yikes, I didn't realize it looked that bad before, I really didn't.

What does your pantry look like?  Maybe you would like to redo yours, too.  These baskets work great, you can pull out, for instance, all your pastas, take a look at what you need and put them back, nothing falls over, nothing spills out.  Works for me...

 ~ jan